Chapter 6 (of 8)Holiday 2005

On our last night Au Bord du Tarn we got quite sentimental thinking that we were going to spend the rest of the holiday under bricks and mortar and would be mothballing the tent the following morning.
We added up the money we had spent on accommodation, i.e. camp site charges for the previous 17 days, it came to an astounding €120. (Or about the cost of one nights B&B at home!)

Since I started putting this account of our holiday together I had a comment from my friend Billy who pointed out correctly that I had now,with my profligate use of pictures, stretched the “Words” concept a bit far.
True for him, since I got the digital camera I have gone a bit nuts with the images. I will have to talk to my personal computer trainer to see if I can change the “Words” title to something more appropriate.
This is all by way of an advance apology because the following piece about Peret is completely picture led.

This was to be the luxurious part of the holiday.
A house, with its own pool in the far south Languedoc with my Sile’s brother Colm, her sister Una and Una’s husband Martin .
It did indeed prove to be a peaceful, relaxed and most pleasant week.

The Olive Tree in Peret
My camping Gazebo came in handy on the terrace.

The church was just across a little valley in the village and we spent a lot of our time, sitting on the terrace, watching the hands of the clock go around and listening to the bells.

Peret church by day

Peret Church by Evening

Peret Church by Night

We spent a lot of time in the pool

Sile in the Pool

Martin (Lyes) in the Pool

Except for Colm who was up in the garrigue botanizing

From which he would bring back fresh sweet green figs

Almonds

and Olives

We did go on a day trip to Pezenas, a pretty but touristy medieval town which had some beautiful Italianate houses

L’Hotel d’Alfonce with its beautiful Renaissance Loggias.
(The word Hotel here just means mansion)

Clermont l’Herault, because less precious, was even more impressive and as we went there on market day, mad busy. The two men underneath on the left are a duo, playing hurdy gurdy and saw!

We also went to the Cirque de Moureze which was a weird geological mishap which had left these strange pillars of rock behind.
The locals claimed all sorts of shapes for these like camels humps and sleeping tigers but to us they just looked like rocks.

And were extremely difficult to get around

Which didn’t stop Sile trying to climb one.

The village itself however was very pretty

On the way back we stopped on a whim at the tiny wayside church of Notre Dame de Peyroux
This had yet another picture of St Roche lifting his skirt to show a passing dog his thigh. What this was all about even we could not imagine.

I took a shot of this,but the church was so dim (and I didn’t like to use a flash) that you may not be able to make it out.
Since we came back I have, by courtesy of the internet, discovered that is a legend about St. Roche being fed by a dog when he had the plague.
In some of the pictures he is rather less coy and is lifting his skirts much higher to show the buboes at his groin!
Eight months after I had written the above I was delighted to read in Alan Bennet’s Untold Stories;
“St Rocca…is more difficult to take however well he’s painted because he must always be hitching up his skirt to show you his boil…..In the painting by Crivelli which is in the wallace Collection you half expect him to be wearing suspenders”

The same church also had a wonderfully voluptuous Golden Madonna

Which contrasted strangely with the virginal figure in blue and white which we see in Irish Churches

A lot of the rest of the time we spent eating

Breakfast

Toulouse Sausage

and huge steaks

And playing Scrabble
and charades on the terrace at night

Which gave us a chance to compare the moon with the one we had seen from the Tarn

It got bigger, and yellower as we went through the week.